Double Take Oppo F3 Plus Review

Admire the Oppo’s decision to go after the selfie-loving crowd, that seems to be paying off so far. Selfie Experts, Oppo have the most popular phones in our database.

Oppo F3 and F3 Plus follow the same strategy. A 16MP rear / 8MP dual selfie setup is these guys claim to fame. The 6-inch F3 Plus is about to keep us busy in our daily routines. Still, we don’t know how it differs from its sibling. Let’s take a bird’s eye view on the key features of the Oppo F3 Plus.

The Oppo F3 Plus, a fairly sizable with a white box. The box uses a two-piece assembly. Though it is entirely made out of cardboard, it is pretty strong and comes complete with a soft-touch finish.

The cradle that actually holds the F3 Plus is made of plastic. It actually doubles as one of the sides of a box, housing a few leaflets, an ejector pin and a complementary rubber case.

Furthermore, also get a VOOC fast wall charger rated at 5V@2A and 5V@4A. The VOOC charging is arguably the best around, but it uses a few extra pins on top of the standard USB layout, so you need the green-colored cable for it to work.

Hardware Overview

F3 Plus outshines both the F1s (71%) and F1 Plus (73.9%). Oppo fitted the 8MP + 16 MP modules right next to the earpiece, on the left. Below the screen, it has a touch sensitive home key, that can be used to unlock your phone through the fingerprint reader.

The Home key has two more capacitive keys – the App switcher and Back keys. Moving to the sides of the phone, you will find the volume rocker on the left, and the right side has a power button and dual nanoSIM card tray. It is hybrid, so you can opt for a microSD card instead of a second SIM.

On the back of the F3 Plus there is another 16MP camera, with a bigger sensor (1/2.8″ vs. 1/3.” for the front) and a much brighter aperture (f/1.7 vs. f/2.0). Just remember F3 plus is a 6-inch phablet, so you need pretty big hands for enjoying this technology.

Display

Oppo F3 Plus display is quite alarming- even in a market that’s warming up more and more to phablets each day.

Display test

100% brightness

Black, cd/m2

White, cd/m2

Contrast ratio

Oppo F1 Plus

0.00

351

∞

Oppo F1s

0.45

420

933

Oppo F3 Plus

0.343

509

1485

OnePlus 3T

0

447

∞

ZTE Axon 7

0.00

352

∞

Huawei P9

0.46

500

1094

Huawei Mate 9

0.41

665

1622

Huawei Mate 8

0.346

471

1361

LG V20

0.43

475

1097

LG V20 Max auto

0.59

628

1064

Sony Xperia Z5 Premium

0.59

566

966

Sony Xperia XA Ultra

0.50

531

1071

Sony Xperia XA1

0.512

537

1049

Meizu m3 max

0.46

449

976

Meizu Pro 6 Plus

0.007

450

64286

nubia Z11

0.43

513

1196

Samsung Galaxy A7 (2017)

0

425

∞

Samsung Galaxy A7 (2017) Max auto

0

533

∞

Samsung Galaxy C7

0.00

422

∞

Samsung Galaxy C7 (Max auto)

0.00

625

∞

Xiaomi Mi Max

0.46

424

922

Xiaomi Mi Note 2

0.005

341

68200

Xiaomi Mi 5s Plus

0.44

637

1448

Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 (S625)

0.322

484

1503

Battery life

F3 sealed-in pack is rated at 4,000 mAh, quite an improvement over the 3,075 mAh of the F1s and the 2,850 mAh on the F1 Plus. It also matches the Oppo R9s – the other 6-incher by the company.

3G talk time and video playback appear to be particularly reasonable. Charging on the F3 Plus is very fast, due to the VOOC charging support. Not only does it top up the battery fast, but VOOC also doesn’t cause overheating.

VOOC managed to charge the F3 Plus from 0% (or as close as it would go before shutting down) to around 58% in just 30 minutes. So what else you need?

Connectivity

The Snapdragon 653 is a pretty modern chip and as such, Qualcomm cut no corners in the connectivity department. It has an X9 LTE modem on board, which can deliver LTE-A (2CA) Cat6 speeds of up to 300 Mbps downstream and 50 Mbps up. You also get LTE on both SIM slots on the F3 Plus.

In terms of local connectivity, there is a dual-band Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac module. Also, Bluetooth v4.1, and a versatile GPS receiver, with support for A-GPS, GLONASS, Beidou, and Galileo. NFC is one notable omission. Also, you are only stuck with slower USB 2.0 transfer speeds through the USB port.

Get a good old 3.5mm audio jack on the bottom of the Oppo F3 Plus. Kudos!

Software Overview

Color OS 3.0

The Oppo F3 Plus runs Colors 3.0, based on Android 6.0 Marshmallow, but its customizations run very deep and it doesn’t follow closely the feature set of the Google-developed operating system.

ColorOS appears to use FlipFont packages, which are available straight from the Google Play store. There are size adjustment options as well.

Performance

A Snapdragon 653 chipset lies at the core of the Oppo F3 Plus experience. In essence, it is a refresh of the Snapdragon 652, with the main improvement being the X9 LTE modem. Beyond that, the refreshed chip also comes with a 10% or so overall performance improvement over its predecessor.

Telephony

The phone app is simple but functional. The dialer supports smart dial, or you can go into the Contacts tab for a more extensive search.

Messaging

The phone comes with a simple Messaging app for SMS and MMS. You can attach multimedia for MMS messages – photos, videos, location, calendar and events. Google’s Hangouts is pre-installed if you want something more advanced (like instant messaging). The app can be tasked with your SMS and MMS communications as well.

Loudspeaker

The Oppo F3 Plus has a single bottom-facing loudspeaker to work with. It only scored an Average rating in our tests.

Speakerphone test

Voice, dB

Pink noise/ Music, dB

Ringing phone, dB

Overall score

Sony Xperia XA1

58.6

67.9

67.7

Below Average

Sony Xperia Z5 Premium

66.6

65.2

66.9

Below Average

Huawei Mate 8 BG

67.8

65.8

66.6

Below Average

Meizu Pro 6 Plus

60.6

69.5

70.3

Below Average

Xiaomi Mi Max

67.1

66.2

68.1

Average

Oppo F3 Plus

62.3

69.8

70.0

Average

Xiaomi Mi 5s Plus

65.0

68.2

70.8

Average

nubia Z11

64.3

70.7

71.2

Average

Oppo F1 Plus

67.9

71.9

66.5

Average

Samsung Galaxy C7

67.3

67.8

72.8

Average

Xiaomi Redmi Note 4

64.2

67.2

76.9

Good

Xiaomi Mi Note 2

63.4

68.6

76.4

Good

OnePlus 3T

61.0

69.3

78.3

Good

Oppo F1s

69.0

72.0

67.9

Good

Oppo R9s

64.3

71.5

76.1

Good

Samsung Galaxy A7 (2017)

66.6

66.1

81.5

Good

Huawei P9

72.1

66.6

75.6

Good

Meizu m3 max

62.7

70.3

84.5

Good

LG V20

68.2

68.6

80.9

Good

ZTE Axon 7

66.4

72.2

84.1

Very Good

Sony Xperia XA Ultra

88.9

79.3

82.7

Excellent

Pre-Installed apps

The Oppo F3 Plus has the Google package in it. We already saw several – the Theme Store, Phone, and Messages, time to meet the others.

Security Center, powered by Avast, offers Virus scans, Permission management as well as memory cleanup. Just hit the Quick scan button to see if the app thinks your phone needs a tune-up.

Other pre-installed apps are:

Backup & Restore app

Weather app

Calender

Multimedia Audio

Test

Frequency response

Noise level

Dynamic range

THD

IMD + Noise

Stereo crosstalk

Oppo F3 Plus

+0.03, -0.01

-93.5

93.3

0.0010

0.0066

-92.0

Oppo F3 Plus (headphones attached)

+0.55, -0.02

-92.4

92.5

0.0090

0.315

-58.1

Huawei Honor 8 Pro

+0.04, -0.01

-93.3

95.0

0.0018

0.0075

-93.3

Huawei Honor 8 Pro (headphones attached)

+0.15, -0.02

-92.6

94.2

0.0023

0.100

-63.9

Samsung Galaxy A7 (2017)

+0.05, -0.28

-91.9

92.2

0.0037

0.051

-90.3

Samsung Galaxy A7 (2017) (headphones attached)

+0.18, -0.05

-91.0

91.6

0.019

0.230

-57.9

OnePlus 3T

+0.03, -0.01

-94.3

94.3

0.0034

0.0063

-93.4

OnePlus 3T (headphones attached)

+0.53, -0.30

-92.9

93.0

0.017

0.434

-49.7

Camera

The F3 Plus’ main showpiece might be the pair of selfie shooters, but it’s no slouch in the main camera department either. Just like its R9s sibling, the Oppo F3 Plus uses a Sony IMX398 sensor. with Dual Pixel autofocus (which you may have heard of from the Samsung Galaxy S7 and S8).

Conclusion

The Oppo F3 Plus is an interesting take on the ever-popular “upper midranger” formula. A cool one, in fact. There’s no shortage of alternatives out there, but none of them can beat the Oppo F3 Plus across the board.